Amanda Aizpuriete was born in Jurmala in 1956 and studied philosophy and philology at the Latvian State University and at the M. Gorky Literary Institute in Moscow. Her books of poetry include Mother Will Come Into the Garden (1980), Dune Street (1986), The Next Bus (1990), The Last Summer (1995), The Outskirts of Babel (1999), A Flock of Rosy Pigeons (1999) and The Dispatch Wind (2004); a novel, The Night Swimmer, was published in 2000. She has been poetry editor for the magazine Avots (Wellspring) and co-editor of the newspaper Aspazija, the magazine Karogs (Flag), and Vides Vestis (The Herald). The American composer Eric Fank used Aizpuriete’s poetry for his symphony for contralto and full orchestra “This Evening Seems to have Gone Bad” and the mono-opera “Anna Ahmatova.” Aizpuriete has received the Bavarian Art Academy’s Poetry Award (1999) and the Days of Poetry Award in Latvia (2000), as well as the Annual Award in Literature for the Best Translation (2003). She has translated Ken Kesey’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” Franz Kafka’s “The Trial,” John Updike’s “The Witches of Eastwick,” Virginia Wolfe’s “Orlando,” in addition to other novels, and the poetry of, among others, Anna Ahmatova, Josef Brodski, Uve Kolbe, Georg Trakl. Aizpuriete has also put together several anthologies of Latvian poetry, and was a member of the Latvian delegation to the European writers’ event “Literature Express Europe 2000.”

Ok, I don’t have to dig my own
grave. Have accomplished being born
in a more peaceful zone.
Am allowed to compose dark tales
about my gypsy, Jewish and phantom ancestors,
and no gun barrel digs into my forehead.
But those looks – how they bore,
how those stony words fly . . .
A yellow star arrives at the threshold
and says: “I was pushed out of heaven.
May I be your household spirit?”
Such are our peaceful homes now,
somewhere between the grave and sky.

Where to carry you? Maybe to Ascension Street?
There is such a street – near my home,
still closer to the sea. Begins imperceptibly
and ends unexpectedly.
Few passersby, many shadows. On both sides, gardens,
and in one – a torrent of violet tulips.
They’re grown to sell, but before market
provide a sacred moment for the idle onlooker.
Such half-blossoming and half-stolen joy
is the worth of poetry.

White stanza, washed completely white
in that stream, at which the hippie grown white-haired
like a lustreless monument sits
on the cobbles of the old town. My white couplet,
and now where will you lead? The city is black
and smoky from a thousand resonances.
Listen: the old one laughs, and the gate archway
responds with empty laughter.
Listen: the past cries out, and the cobbles
with winged stones cry out in response.
My whitened stanza, only you have no echo,
neither in soot nor in the caretakers of old age.

Forest stream. “Your palms are red from raspberries,
rinse them.” Water so clear, I’m reluctant
to stain it with even the sweetest juice.
“It’ll do no harm. The water here is eternally clear,
because she swam here. She, who plants flowers
on abandoned graves and gathers up
forgotten songs.” Have you seen her?
“No, but the water is eternally clear. Rinse your hands.”